Waiting: A Letter

Abstract

Waiting:A Letter Ariane Bolduc (bio) Dearest—More photos? Just photos?What should they mean to me, these horses, their train of silhouettes,riding the line of the sky? What is your obsession with the horizonand its silence, that slicing of the future in half? The photo of your shadow,stretching across the straw-colored plain —your long legs even longer undersun—that one's my favorite, your legs like an A-frame over the light,golden earth. Have you noticed how many of your pictures hold that shape,all those As? The Indian tee-pees, the swing set and slide, corrodingin the dusty, abandoned playground. A: the first letter in all your non-letters,the words you won't write, the first letter of my name. Dearest, picture mehere, in red autumn: the Winesap apples [End Page 69] bulge in burlap. A too-full sack sitsrotting on the porch beside the rusty rocker that doesn't rock. Children pass, laughing,from the Catholic school on 3rd St. The steeple stabs the perfect blue— At my feet, shadows shake on brick,wind licks across my ankles, and rice-like leaves litter the street—little grains of leaf. Sand. Salt. [End Page 70] Ariane Bolduc Ariane Bolduc, a native of southern California, currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she serves as the Grants Manager for ProMusica Chamber Orchestra and as an Artist-in-Residence at Riverside Methodist Hospital. She received her BA in English from the University of Southern California, and her MFA in creative writing from the Ohio State University. In 2006, she received an Individual Excellence Award in Poetry from the Ohio Arts Council, and she has published in the Connecticut Review, Salt Hill, and The Laurel Review, with a poem forthcoming in The Portland Review. Copyright © 2009 Michigan State University Board of Trustees